The summer games drought is over, everyone. After weeks of almost no activity in the UK's physical chart, several notable titles drop all at once. Surprise surprise, they're all right at the top, with Nintendo's Astral Chain taking first place.

It had its work cut out, though, with Wreckfest, Man of Medan, and Control also vying for a chart-topping debut. These three games ended up in second, third, and fourth respectively, meaning all the key new releases are bunched up at the top. It means everything else gets shunted down; Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled spins out to sixth, Grand Theft Auto V is knocked down to ninth, and Red Dead Redemption 2 falls out of the top 10 and into number 12. Marvel's Spider-Man, meanwhile, enjoys a big leap in sales thanks to a price drop, crawling up from number 34 to number eight. It's nice to have something to talk about again.

Having grown up alongside PlayStation, Stephen has developed a wide knowledge of video games, from AAA blockbusters to the smallest indie gems. He also has the Platinum for The Witness, so there’s that.

I knew Control wouldn't sell...
People buy into hype and Control didn't have much hype going for it...
Being a part of WWS will help Remedy get an identity...
And Sony would get more European devs as well...
A lot of recent Sony studio closures have been in Europe...
I hope they start expanding soon...
Speaking of European studios, how the hell did I not notice Bugbear...
Their games are fine af, and they are really good at arcade racing too, a genre that is very underrepresented on the PS4 after Evolution...
Bugbear is now on top of my Sony WWS wishlist...

Edit: Just read that Bugbear was acquired by THQ Nordic -_-
Back to Three Fields Entertainment then...

@RogerRoger. It cant die because joker gta aint no joke.did you know that gta is tthe best selling video games franchise right now.oh wow😳.you didn't know.like the late great biggie smalls once said.if. you don't know.now you know playa.word up son

I'm glad people are enjoying it, but I don't think Astral Chain is as amazing as a lot of people are saying. Certainly not as good as Nier Automata or Bayonetta. There are too many inconsistencies in the game that annoy me. The pacing of it is just... off. It's still fun though.

Those "Control" numbers are a bit of a kicker for Remedy considering they're from across three platforms. From a purely mercenary point of view it's good news for me because a price drop is probably going to be on the cards sooner rather than later and I made the choice to buy "Astral Chain" first. It's an absolute cracker.

No surprise here. You've gotta remember that the big Switch releases will always have a good initial burst of sales purely because a large chunk of the console's userbase is gonna pick it up (assuming the quality is there).

Control was looking wobbly from the start, too. I don't feel like many people even knew what it was until last week, and it's releasing right before a very busy month.

Nintendo heavily pushed exclusive sold similar to Wreckfest or Man of Medan? I didn't even hear about those two games. And when you add that Switch is still the only console with heavy physical sales it doesn't look like it had huge sale numbers with no real competition. I would bet that with all digital sales included it wouldn't be top spot.

@shuvamg009 between number 1 and number 4 of the charts are just 1500 units in between. So I don't know how you don't consider Control a success with 4 games launching in total and they are all hair thin next to each other.

@JAMes-BroWWWn "Between number 1 and number 4 of the charts are just 1500 units in between"This makes it all the more of a proof that Control didn't sell well...Nintendo usually has the weakest presence in European territories...Add a Platinum game to that (historically, Nintendo-Platinum games don't do well in terms of sales)...And then add no digital sales data for Nintendo games...I'm presuming none of those sold particularly well...I could very well be wrong though...

It's a shame that Control isn't doing better but 505 Games didn't do a good job marketing it which is half the battle. People HAVE to know the game's out.Also if I was a Nintendo fan as much as a PlayStation fan I would urging them to buy Platinum.

@AdamNovice Why should anyone want Nintendo or any other big company to buy Platinum? They're clearly capable of releasing excellent games across multiple platforms.

I prefer what they're doing right now, where Nintendo appears to be helping to finance and market exclusives developed for their platform, which still leaves Platinum free to collab with other companies when it makes sense (for example, with S-E for NieR: Automata, or with the developers of that GranBlue game).

@Ralizah I'm just talking from if I was in Nintendo's shoes. Tbh I think it's inevitable that they will be bought out sooner or later. Despite there reputation the games they make are very niche and most of them just don't sell well. And after Scalebound was cancelled there were rumours that the studio was on the brink till Nier Automata came along. In an ideal world they should carry on what there doing but contract work isn't guaranteed to go on forever, especially if everything starts becoming subscription based services then those providers will want there own exclusive content from the 1st parties.